Chapter 174 : Chapter 174

Chapter 174. The Specific Method of a Knight’s Advancement

Whiteflower City, inside Finley’s house.

In one corner of the room, crates of sealed wine had been stacked high. They were things Finley had prepared in advance for the celebration.

But although his side currently held a great advantage, Finley was not the kind of man who celebrated before victory was secured.

So he remained especially cautious, and over the past few days, he had not gone out at all.

Knock, knock.

Fran rapped on Finley’s door. Only after several seconds did Finley open it.

When he saw that it was Fran, he hurriedly invited her inside.

“Hey, Elan, what brings you here?” Finley asked proactively.

He was extremely warm toward the friend who had helped him win the last duel.

“If you’re here to ask what we should do about the next battle, then I can tell you not to worry at all. Our opponents really aren’t much to speak of. As long as we perform normally, we can basically take them down.”

Fran found a chair and sat down before saying to Finley,

“I’m not here to ask about that. I want to ask about the method of advancing as a knight.”

“Advancement?!” Finley froze for a moment, then suddenly understood. “Right, how could I forget? At your level, it really is time to start thinking about advancement.”

Finley sat down directly on the bed and began explaining the method of knightly advancement to Fran.

Fran narrowed her eyes. In truth, she had wanted to ask about the specifics of knighthood for quite some time.

The entire knight system gave her the impression that one always needed some additional external support in order to advance to the first rank.

That was different from the way mages advanced. The rules on the knight side were far harsher.

She had not asked before because their relationship had not been close enough, but after that victory, the two of them had grown much closer. Naturally, they could speak about this now.

“First of all, if you want to advance, you must join an order of knights and obtain a knightly title bestowed on you by that order. Only then do you have the foundation needed for advancement.”

That was how Finley explained it.

“My knightly title is Hound. I already had it before I joined Duke Theodore’s order of knights.”

“If I successfully become the lord of Whiteflower Territory, then my family crest will bear the image of a hound, as the symbol of me as a knight.”

“And if my son inherits my territory, then he will inherit my knightly title along with it, and he can also be called the Hound Knight.”

“That’s one of the uses of a knightly title.”

“Ordinarily speaking, as long as you obtain a knightly title, you qualify to advance into a full knight, even if you aren’t in an order of knights.”

“It’s just that almost no commander of an order of knights would hand his family’s knightly title to an outsider, and the procedures are also extremely cumbersome. Almost nobody advances that way.”

Fran suddenly spoke up and interrupted Finley’s explanation.

“Mm... just tell me directly about orders of knights.”

Finley blinked.

“I thought you didn’t want to join an order of knights, so I didn’t talk about that... All right, then let me explain.”

“An order of knights isn’t something just anyone can establish. It needs the support of a territory.”

“A territory?” Fran asked in confusion.

“That’s right. A territory. The establishment of any order of knights requires a territory as its foundation. Only then can it support people’s advancement.”

“The order of knights I belong to is only able to let so many people advance because it relies on the vast lands owned by Duke Theodore.”

“And once I become a lord, I’ll also be able to arrange for my own subordinates to advance to the first rank. It’s just that the number will be far smaller than the number within an order of knights.”

“For example, the limit for Whiteflower Territory is probably around five first-rank knights. But two of those slots have to be handed over to Duke Theodore, so I can only provide three advancement slots myself.”

“If Elan wants to advance that way, you can come to me.”

Fran waved her hand and refused.

“No need.”

Then she asked another question that had been troubling her.

“Then after a knight advances, do they no longer need the support of a territory or an order of knights?”

What she really wanted to ask was this: Finley was a knight who had come over after surrendering, yet after leaving his original order of knights, nothing had happened to him at all.

In that case, doesn’t that mean that as long as I help one person advance, I can kick them out afterward, recruit someone else, and keep doing that until I have a whole crowd of knights?

Finley chuckled.

“It doesn’t work like that. A knight needs the support of a territory to advance, but after advancing, if he wants to bring out the power of the first rank, he still needs the support of a territory.”

“If a knight leaves his territory or order of knights, then it becomes almost impossible for him to display the strength he ought to have.”

“Even if he forcibly stirs it up and can still unleash first-rank power, after doing that a few times, he won’t be far from death.”

“So every knight has to belong to a territory or an order of knights. Only then can he maintain his supernatural power.”

Fran fell into thought. Now she understood.

She had truly been trapped in the habitual mindset of her previous life, assuming that since there was already a spellcasting profession like mage, then it was only natural for there to be a purely physical profession like knight as well.

But the truth was that knight was not what she had imagined at all. It was an entirely different system of profession.

That system revolved around territory. In truth, it had merely borrowed the name of knight; at its core, it was still a profession centered on territory.

At that moment, Fran suddenly felt that the professions sold by the Adventurers’ Guild no longer seemed so abstract or difficult. On the contrary, the knight profession now felt much stranger.

Those professions sold by the Adventurers’ Guild only required one to accomplish certain things in order to advance, and after advancing, there was no particular burden. Knights, on the other hand, still faced all manner of restrictions even after advancement.

It was only because the method of knightly advancement was simpler, and because it allowed more people to advance, that knight had become the mainstream profession across the continent.

Yet although knights appeared to be a purely physical profession, in reality they were nothing of the sort.

After understanding this point, Fran instead felt that the physical professions advanced through the Spirit Realm were the orthodox ones, the true “warrior” professions that could stand alongside mages.

Once she understood that, Fran also grasped the deeper reason why the Alliance had so little interest in those lords along the borders.

As a profession, the path of a lord had its own method of advancement as well: acquire greater territory, and through greater territory, one could naturally continue advancing.

But even if the Alliance wanted to let people advance by that method, the amount of territory required would be astronomical.

Just reclaiming the entire Antir Region and then establishing a proper system of governance there would already require an enormous amount of effort.

And even that would only be enough to raise the lords of those regions to the peak of the second rank. There was not even a shadow of the third rank in sight.

That was why most of the mages in the Alliance had no interest in those territories. What interested them was mainly the relationship between lords and territory.

What they wanted was to break free of the constraints of lordship, so that mages too could receive the benefits of territory.

But for now, that was still impossible.